


Ender Adventure

by Leopardmask



Category: Hermitcraft RPF
Genre: Ender xB, Gen, Non-human hermits - Freeform, One Shot, Respawn, Teleportation, end-busting, hermitcraft season 7, slime man gets some lore too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:47:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24315304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leopardmask/pseuds/Leopardmask
Summary: Just your average End city raiding, except something funky happened to the end gateway, and it's been having an odd effect on xB.
Comments: 30
Kudos: 126





	Ender Adventure

“Man, I might need more shulker boxes,” xB muttered to himself, trying to stuff more gravel into a chest. He slammed it shut and sighed. Which would he rather do: mix concrete all day for his base, or do some flying through the End?

Within minutes, he was making his way to the closest End portal he knew of and diving in without a second thought.

xB landed relatively gracefully on the obsidian platform on the other side. Teleportation could be disorienting, but at least the End portals didn’t drag you nauseatingly through dimensions. It was more like an ender pearl, simply taking whatever dropped in and popping it into existence somewhere else.

Speaking of ender pearls, xB hadn’t brought any. He turned around and jumped fearlessly off the platform, letting his elytra carry him into the enderman farm. xB checked the elytra once he’d landed, decided it was good enough for now, and settled for grabbing a bundle of ender pearls out of the overflowing chests and rocketing over to the island. He casually tossed a pearl into one of the two open gateways and closed his eyes, waiting for the pearl to land in the Outer End. With his eyes shut, he didn’t see the normally-calm energy of the gateway wobble as the pearl entered...

xB felt the world shift around him and opened his eyes. He was surrounded by the chorus plants of the Outer End.

His foot was also stuck in the end stone.

_Okay, okay, don’t panic._ xB grabbed his pickaxe and carefully chipped at the stone, quickly pulling his foot free, unharmed. _Weird teleport, that’s all._

The teleport had gone weird in more ways than one, xB soon realized, as an unexpected dizzy spell washed over him and sent him sinking to the ground. He groaned, one hand to his head. Gateways weren’t supposed to do that. Ender transport was supposed to be neat and easy.

He sat for a few minutes, collecting himself, before the dizzy spell passed. Just as xB was about to get up, another pearl flew through the portal, breaking against xB’s chest and making him stumble again.

“What the...?” xB braced himself for someone teleporting on top of him, but nothing happened.

Obviously, though, someone else wanted to come through the gateway. xB decided to stand back a bit and wait. Sure enough, after about a minute, another pearl popped out, at a slightly different angle. This time, xB thought he saw the gateway wobble, but he was distracted by the other hermit now staggering and falling in the same way xB had.

xB trotted over to help. The other hermit, it turned out, was Jevin, clutching his head hard enough to make a dent in it.

“Something’s definitely rough with that gateway,” xB commented. “Are you okay?”

Jevin looked up, squinting. “Wha...? xB? What are you doing here?”

“Same thing you are, I would guess.” xB gave Jevin some space, and when the slime man seemed to have recovered a bit, xB held out his hand to help Jevin up.

Jevin gladly took it and pulled himself to his feet. “Man, what was that about? I’ve never had that happen before.”

“It happened to me too,” xB replied. “Like I said, something’s rough. We should probably tell Xisuma about it when we’re done out here.”

“Yeah.” Jevin rummaged around for his helmet. “Hey, as long as we’re both here, you want to raid together? They’re always easier to tackle with more people anyway. We can split the loot.”

“Awesome,” xB grinned. “You sure you’re good? You still have a, uh...” He made a vague tapping gesture on his temple.

Jevin chuckled. “It’s fine, you know me. I bounce back.” Then he frowned slightly. “What about you? You’ve got some sort of black stuff around your neck.”

xB raised an eyebrow and put his hand to his neck. Nothing felt different. “What do you mean, ‘some sort of black stuff’?”

“I don’t know, man.” Jevin held out his helmet for xB to see his reflection. Sure enough, there were some odd black markings poking out from under his collar. “Something from the glitchy gateway, maybe?”

“Maybe.” xB looked away from the helmet and checked out his friend. “You don’t have anything like that on you though.”

“Hmm,” Jevin mused, setting his helmet on his head. “Let’s just make sure we remember to check it out later.”

\-----

They had been flying for some time when the first End city came into view.

“Finally,” Jevin called. He banked and headed straight for the floating ship, while xB dove down to the entrance, shield at the ready. Jevin quickly cut down the two shulkers on the ship and pulled the elytra off the wall, then hopped off to find xB still at the entrance, a puzzled look on his face.

“What’s up?” Jevin asked. “Someone else hasn’t been here, have they?”  
  


“No, look,” xB pointed. “The shulkers aren’t attacking me.”

“Is it because you have your shield out?” Jevin wondered. As if on cue, a shulker growled at him and shot a bullet directly at his own shield. “...Never mind.”

Curiously, xB stepped closer, until he was right between the shulkers, in the doorway of the city. The shulkers just watched him. He pulled out his sword and stabbed one. It fell off the wall with a gurgle. The other made an angry sound and shot at him. xB, unprepared, yelped when he felt the bullet hit him in the side. He put his left hand up so he wouldn’t hit his head on the ceiling as he rose off the ground, and with his other hand he slashed at the shulker.

Jevin just laughed. “Not attacking you, huh?”

“Well they weren’t,” xB said indignantly. “The one only shot at me after I killed its friend.” He thumped back down to the ground and retrieved the now-empty shells.

“I think that black stuff from before is spreading, by the way,” Jevin commented. “It’s up to your beard.”

“Why’d you have to _say_ it, man?” xB joked. “I was doing a fine job of ignoring it until you said that.”

“Sorry.” Jevin smirked and started up the stairs to the tower.

\-----

The rest of that End city was uneventful, so after they had collected all the shulker shells they could find, the two hermits moved on. Conversation was difficult in flight, so they flew in silence, only broken by the occasional sound of one of their rockets. xB’s thoughts drifted to the spreading blackness on his neck and face.

_It wouldn’t make sense for me to be withered,_ he mused. _Besides, I don’t feel rotten like I would under that effect. Whatever IS happening, I wonder how much it’ll spread - or where it even came from-_

“Look out!”

At Jevin’s warning, xB gasped and pulled into a turn, narrowly avoiding the mast of another floating ship. Jevin had already landed on the deck. “Thanks, man!” xB called back. He twisted around and landed on the ship, killing the topside shulker and pulling the dragon head off the prow while Jevin was belowdecks.

Jevin came up the stairs just as xB was turning to glide over to the rest of the city. “Ah-” Jevin yelped, ducking his head and nearly falling off the edge of the ship. “xB, you scared me, man!”

“Huh? Why?” Normally, xB would crack a joke at the whole situation, but he was too busy being concerned about... whatever was happening to him.

“I don’t know how to tell you this, but...your eyes are glowing.” Jevin held up the flat side of his sword toward xB. “And they’re purple now? They look like enderman eyes. With that and your black clothes, I thought you were an actual enderman for a second.”

xB peered at the narrow strip of his reflection in the sword. The black markings from before had made thin tracks to the corners of his eyes, which were indeed purple and reflecting light from the end rods nearby and the enchanted glint of the sword.

“Whoa...” xB breathed. “Do you think I’m turning into an enderman?” He was only half joking.

“I don’t know, dude. This is crazy.”

xB looked around, noticing for the first time that the End didn’t seem as dark as it usually did, and he could clearly see the shulkers hanging off every corner of the city. Then he turned back to Jevin.

“You want to keep going? Or should we get home and talk to X?”  
  


“You’re the one with the glowing purple eyes, dude,” Jevin chuckled. “And I’m also like the least qualified person to give you advice here.”

xB thought for a minute, watching Jevin pensively. “Let’s keep raiding,” he decided. “Whatever happens, happens.”

\-----

The next End city was a single tower, so the two hermits landed next to it. xB glanced around to find which side the entrance was on, but his gaze landed on an enderman instead. “Crap,” was all xB said, pulling out his sword.

But the enderman didn’t attack. It stared back at xB. If anything, it looked more curious than angry.

When xB realized he wasn’t being attacked, he lowered his sword and looked at the enderman again. “...Hi?”

“ _Hello._ ”

xB startled violently, prompting Jevin to draw his own sword. xB waved him down. “Hey, hey, it’s fine. I think.”

The enderman stepped forward. Jevin did not relax. “ _What are you?_ ” it asked xB. “ _What has made you like us?_ ”

“Frankly?” xB replied. “No clue. There was a glitch with the portal we used to get out here, but...” He trailed off, not knowing what else to say.

“ _Where?_ ”

“Um...?” xB turned to Jevin. “Hey Jev, do you happen to know the coords of the gateway we used?”

Jevin, a bit taken aback by the sudden question, started scrolling through his notes on his communicator. “I think so? Oh, here they are.” He read them off to xB, who repeated them to the enderman. The enderman nodded and vanished.

The hermits stared at the place where it had been for a moment before Jevin finally spoke. 

“Dude, were you actually talking to that enderman?”

“Yeah, man! I wasn’t expecting it to actually... talk back, though.”  
  


Jevin grinned. “I am so jealous, dude. Do you know how much time I would spend in the End if I didn’t have to worry about looking at endermen? If I could _talk_ to them?”

xB looked at Jevin with surprise. “I didn’t actually know you liked the End that much. I just thought you came out here for the sake of your shops and stuff.”

“It’s nice out here,” Jevin shrugged. “It’s cold. I get all soft in hot weather. And ever since we moved worlds, everywhere that’s near anybody is hot - it’s kind of annoying, actually.”

“Hence the ocean base,” xB realized.

“Hence the ocean base,” Jevin confirmed. “The water around it keeps the whole place cool.”

In the time it took for them to finish chatting, they had easily dispatched the shulkers in the short tower and were ready to move on. xB gave Jevin a questioning glance. Jevin replied, “You’re good, man. I think whatever was going on with you has stopped spreading.”

“Awesome, thanks.” xB took off from the roof of the tower, with Jevin following close behind.

\-----

The two hermits kept raiding together until both were worn out. So too, apparently, were their elytra.

“Wha-” xB cried, as the delicate framework snapped. 

Jevin dove toward xB as he tried to fall toward one of the sparsely-arranged tiny islands below them. Neither hermit reached their target. Jevin watched in distress as xB missed the edge and kept going. Jevin pulled up and landed on the island xB was aiming for. He closed his eyes, unable to watch his friend die to the suffocating void, waiting for the buzz of his communicator telling him the inevitable. The next thing he heard, though, wasn’t a buzz, but a...

_Vwoop._

xB landed on the island with a grunt, thrashing for a moment as if he were still falling. Jevin, already sitting near the edge, only barely had the presence of mind to stick himself to the end stone so his startled response wouldn’t send _him_ into the void.

“xB???”

xB sat up, breathing hard. He looked around with wide eyes, feeling the end stone underneath him. “Huh? I’m- I’m okay! How??” At that moment, he saw that his friend was not-so-casually hanging half off the side of the island, and hurriedly helped him back up. Once both were sitting safely on the little circle of stone, first xB, then Jevin, broke into relieved laughter.

“Holy crap, dude,” Jevin gasped. “That was scary!”

“You’re telling me?” xB chuckled. “I was actually about to die down there! What even just happened?”

Jevin got out his ender chest and started searching through it. “Well, obviously you’re, like, half enderman now. So apparently you can teleport like one too.” 

xB almost smacked himself, the answer was so obvious. “Right, of course! What are you looking for in your chest?”

“Spare elytra? Do you have one?”

“You probably need it more than I do - I’ll bet your wings are close to breaking too.”

xB waited for Jevin to check, agree, put on a different elytra, and pick up his ender chest, before continuing: “Although... we have a faster way back to the bigger islands now.”

Jevin looked up. “Don’t you dare.”

xB smirked and grabbed Jevin’s arm. Jevin thought he saw the man’s eyes glow brighter, just before xB winked at him. “No no n-”

_Vwoop._

Both hermits stumbled a bit as they appeared on the next large landmass, xB letting go of Jevin’s arm for balance. Jevin glared at him. “Dude!”

xB laughed. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“You didn’t know that it would! It was only your second teleport ever!”

xB sighed. “Sorry. Won’t happen again. You gotta admit it was cool though, right?”

“I guess,” Jevin grumbled. “No different from throwing the pearls, except the landing didn’t hurt.”

“See? Cool,” xB insisted. “I’d say it’s probably about time to go back, you think? We got some loot, broke an elytra...”

“Yeah, I’m about ready,” Jevin confirmed. Then an idea struck him. “Hey, instead of searching for a gateway for ages, I’ll bet you could ask an enderman for directions.”

“Hey, you’re right!” xB exclaimed. He walked up to the nearest enderman. It was still weird to actually _look_ at them. He tapped it on the arm. “Excuse me? Sir? ...Or ma’am?”

The enderman turned to stare at xB. “ _What do you want, half-human?_ ”

“Yeah, my friend and I are just trying to get home. Could you, uh, tell us where the nearest gateway back to the main island is?”

The enderman responded with sounds that xB was unable to translate into words; instead, they translated themselves into an _impression_ of where to go.

xB smiled at the enderman. “Alright. Thank you!” He motioned to Jevin, and the two continued on their way, Jevin still carefully looking at the ground.

\-----

They made it to the gateway with little incident. Jevin got out an ender pearl and was about to throw it into the gateway when xB suddenly snapped his fingers. “That’s it!”

“...What’s it?”

“The ender pearl,” xB explained. “We couldn’t figure out why this whole ender thing was happening to me but not you, since we went through the same glitchy portal.”

Jevin gave him a confused look. “I assumed it just couldn’t affect me because I wasn’t human to begin with.”

“I mean, maybe,” xB replied, “but something else happened that I forgot about. You had to use two pearls to get through, right?”

“...Yeah? The first one went into the void. Where are you going with this?”

“It didn’t go into the void,” xB said, getting excited. “It hit _me._ I’ll bet it got messed up when it went through, so instead of teleporting you, it did...” he gestured vaguely at his face and chest, “this.”

“So you’re telling me,” Jevin said slowly, “that if our places were reversed, I would be turning into some sort of... enderslime?”

xB shrugged. “Probably.”

“Weird.” Jevin tossed his ender pearl into the gateway, with xB following close behind.

\-----

xB waited until they had reached the gold farm in the Nether to fix his broken elytra. It didn’t feel right anymore to use the enderman farm. Then he messaged Xisuma and flew to the admin’s base to tell him about the gateway - although he knew it would probably be fixed by the time anyone else entered the End.

He decided to fly to the shopping district next, to check out how the Red Zone’s business was going in its new location. A buzz from his communicator made xB fumble to check it.

Next thing he knew, he was waking up in his bed back at home with a groan, after having crashed headfirst into a tall, skinny shop that definitely hadn’t been there before. xB checked the chat again.

**xBCrafted experienced kinetic energy**

<iJevin> You good dude?

xB sighed and opened up the keyboard.

<xBCrafted> Yeah, but I’m all the way back at my base. Could you make sure my stuff’s alright? It’s somewhere near my shop.

<iJevin> Sure thing

xB swung himself out of bed and turned to leave for his portal when he caught a flash of light reflected in the window. He looked back, and saw his own reflection, eyes still shining purple. Experimentally, xB closed them and imagined himself elsewhere. When he opened his eyes again, he was in front of his portal two houses over.

xB grinned. “Awww, yeah! The ender power is here to stay!”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why but I've just kinda started associating xB with teleportation and ender stuff? Anyway that's the inspiration for this fic, idk I just wanted to give xB some fic love. He's a cool guy, he deserves some cool superpowers :)


End file.
